Breaking a Monopoly

Résumé du livre

Drawing on Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice records in the National Archives, the Reed Smoot Papers, the Leonard J. Arrington Papers, and congressional hearings and debates, this dissertation explores the relationship between the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a former beet sugar producer in the American West, and the federal government during the Progressive Era. The Utah-Idaho provides an interesting case study in how federal regulation worked in the West, as the government frequently investigated it between 1911 and 1921 for unfair business practices. In 1911, the House of Representatives, inquiring into the holdings of the American Sugar Refining Company in the beet sugar industry, examined the Utah-Idaho, but issued no punishments against it. In 1913, after Democrats had proposed a sugar tariff reduction, the corporation worked closely with Reed Smoot, Utah's Republican senator, to fight the revisions. During the First World War, the Utah-Idaho followed government price controls over the industry, but when these proscriptions were extended into peacetime, the company rebelled. The Department of Justice therefore investigated it for profiteering, but after the Supreme Court declared the 1917 Lever Act unconstitutional, the inquiry was stopped. Finally, in 1920 and 1921, the Federal Trade Commission tried the corporation for using unfair business methods in its relations with competitors. Although the commission found the Utah-Idaho guilty, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned the decision. By the end of the Progressive Era, the government had largely failed to punish the Utah-Idaho for its practices. Yet because the government had provided life-saving loans to the company in 1921 after a crash in sugar prices, the two entities were still closely tied together. This dissertation concludes that in the case of the Utah-Idaho, federal regulation failed in its larger goals. The foundation of cooperation that developed between the government and the Utah-Idaho occurred in spite of regulation and not because of it.